Student Profile: David Gomez ’17

David Gomez ’17 created a usage model of the NAND memory in Sonos players during his sophomore internship at the Cambridge, Mass., office of Sonos, Inc.

Jessica Jones

August 15, 2016

David Gomez ’17, computer science

Internship: Sonos Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

David Gomez ’17 worked at Sonos, Inc., in its Cambridge, Mass., office during the summer of 2015. David’s project involved creating a usage model of the NAND memory in Sonos players. Through this model he was able to give Sonos a better idea of how data gets stored on NAND in the players as well as assess the reliability risks posed by NAND memory failures.

“I really enjoyed learning about Sonos and the process by which they make high quality products. The attention to detail and effort that every employee puts into the products is truly incredible.”

David had his first connection with Sonos through a UPOP field trip to the Cambridge Sonos office. “Visiting the office allowed me to get first-hand experience with the culture and values of Sonos which gave me a leg up over other internship applicants.”

David found that he used several of the skills and ideas he learned over his UPOP year.

“Initiative was very important, as I had an individual project, but corporate anthropology was key as the culture of Sonos and all its various methods of operation are critical to its success. Learning how things should be done was not only important to being a successful member of the company but also gave me many valuable lessons.

“UPOP’s training in effective communication was also important when as an intern I needed to be able to figure out who to talk to and how to get the knowledge and resources I needed from them that I would need to complete my project. And, during UPOP’s team training week, I was able to interact with and meet many experienced and older engineers, especially my mentor, and this was helpful in the shift to an environment dominated by experienced engineers.”

Sonos, Inc. was founded in 2002, and creates smart speaker systems. Sonos connects with UPOP in several ways—hosting field trips to its local offices, offering internships to UPOP students, and now has a UPOP alum working there full-time.